As one of the top Dota 2 teams in the world, a 2-5 start to MDL Macau 2019 wasn’t what people expected out of Virtus Pro.
They just barely avoided having the worst record overall, thanks to holding the tiebreaker over EHOME. But that didn’t help them much considering they still started the playoffs in the lower bracket.
VP’s first match in the playoffs was against Invictus Gaming, a team that started the event strongly but fell off on the second day. The stakes for the matchup were extremely high because the loser would be eliminated from the event, joining EHOME, who had just lost to Newbee.
Neither team wanted to get knocked out this early, and so, one of the highlights of the day began. It was such a close contest with a 29-26 end K/D in favor of VP, who had to fight back from a huge disadvantage early on. IG nearly won the entire thing after getting off to a great start, but VP flipped a switch and marched on.
The 58-minute battle came down to the last minute as VP landed the final blows when their own Ancient was primed to be taken.
With such a big win under their belt, VP started their slow crawl through the competition. Their next series was against the team with the second-best record in the event, Vici Gaming, who had just lost to Evil Geniuses. They traded blows with the Chinese squad, splitting the first two games.
After losing their second game in a very non-competitive way, the switch flipped again and VP got to work in game three. Vici held on despite being at a constant disadvantage, but it wasn’t enough to stop VP once they hit their stride.
Virtus Pro went on to face another Chinese team in Newbee, basically playing out the same scenario again. They took game one in a tight contest, got blown out in game two, and then destroyed their opponent before moving on to the lower bracket finals.
With only one series left before they break out of the lower bracket, VP will face EG in the lower bracket finals at 11pm CT on Feb. 23.
Published: Feb 23, 2019 03:33 pm